■ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/miltonOOwill MILTON Miniature Series of Great Writers Edited by G. C. Williamson, Litt.D. Pott 8vo, Illustrated, to be had in cloth or limp leather, COLERIDGE. By Richard Garnett,C.B.,LL.D. SHAKESPEARE. By Alfred Ewen. CHAUCER. By Rev. W. Tuckwell, M.A. DE QUINCE Y. By Henry S. Salt. DICKENS. By W. Teignmouth Shore. JOHNSON. By John Dennis. BROWNING. By Sir Frank T. Marzials, C.B. MILTON. By G. C. Williamson, Litt.D. In Preparation, DEFOE. By A. Wherry. SCOTT. By J. H. W. Laing, M.B. GOLDSMITH. By Ernest Lang Buckland, M.A. LAMB. By Walter Jerrold. MACAULAY. By Richard Garnett, C.B.,LL.D. MOLIERE. By Sir Frank T. Marzials, C.B. THE ANCIENT CLASSICS XENOPHON. By E. C. Marchant, M.A. HORACE. By Rev. W. Tuckwell. LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS. Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers MILTON BY GEORGE C. WILLIAMSON LlTT.D. LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1905 CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND TOOKS COURT, CHANCER V LANE, LONDON. PREFACE IN this little volume, which aims only at giving a general account of the life and works of Milton for the young student, the author could make no claim of original research even if such research were still possible with regard to a Master who has already been so very completely studied from all points of view. He desires to express indebtedness for his facts to the many previous writers who have gone over the same ground, and especially to the ex- haustive and altogether admirable work of Pro- fessor Masson, the memoir by Mark Pattison, the treatise by Professor Masterman, and the critical remarks of Dr. Johnson and Addison. The excuse for his temerity in venturing on the impossible task of estimating the works of such an intellectual giant as the subject of this memoir must be found in his very great and abiding admiration for Milton's poetical works ; and for the present purpose he has re-read every line, whether in prose or verse, which is written in English, and has studied afresh many of the Latin treatises. He hopes the result, however modest, may not fail of its object, which is to induce the reader to study the originals and form his own opinion of them. He has added the British Museum references to the various early editions to save trouble to the student. The Mount, Guildford. April, 1905. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Biographical 9 Milton's Prose Works 58 Milton's Poetical Works 67 Samson Agonistes 87 Books about Milton 106 Portraits of John Milton 109 6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO FACE PAGE John Milton, 1670, Aetat. 62. From the engraving by Faithorne, after his drawing in crayons, ad vivum . . Frontispiece John Milton as a Young Man. From the oil painting in the College Hall at Christ's College, Cambridge, by permis- sion of the Master 14 The Clay Bust of Milton, said to be the work of Pierce, in the Library at Christ's College, Cambridge, by permission of the Master 24 Portrait of Milton, by Pieter van der Plaas in the National Portrait Gallery . 32 Miniature of Milton as a Young Man, by Samuel Cooper, by permission of the Duke of Buccleuch 38 Signature of John Milton, 19th Nov., 165 1 written in the Album Amicorum of Christopher Arnold, Professor of His- tory at Nuremberg, now preserved at the British Museum 44 Page from Milton's Bible, on which he has entered with his own hand memoranda of the birth, etc., of himself and members of his family, preserved in the British Museum 48 7 O mighty mouth' d inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages ; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset — Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. Tennyson. 8 JOHN MILTON BIOGRAPHICAL T OHN MILTON was born on December 9th, J 1608. He was the son of a scrivener, who resided in Bread Street, in the City of London, at the sign of the Spread Eagle, the sign having probably been adapted from the armorial bear- ings of the family, which are to be seen on the agreement for " Paradise Lost," sealed by the poet. John Milton's grandfather had been a sturdy Catholic who had suffered considerably at the time of the change of religion, and he had dis- inherited his son John on account of his having joined the Anglican Church. The family was from Oxfordshire, and John Milton the elder had attended a school in Oxford with a view, it is said, of entering the Church. But on being disinherited he came up to London, and set up as a scrivener close to Cheapside. The poet's mother was a warm-hearted and gener- ous woman, described by her son in the follow- ing words : " A most excellent mother, particu- larly known for her charity through the neigh- 9 IO MILTON bourhood." She was nine years the junior of her husband, but almost the only other fact that we know respecting her was that her eye- sight was not strong, and before she was thirty she had to use glasses, although her husband read without them up to the age of eighty-four. John Milton the elder was musical, and had written a madrigal, in forty parts, for a Polish prince, who had been so pleased with the com- position that he had presented him with a gold chain and medal. The household was both a serious and a musical one, and as the father appears to have been successful in his profes- sion, there was, at least in early days, no lack of means. The lad, it would seem, was destined for the Church, and if the lines written beneath the first engraving of his picture, and usually attributed to his own pen, were his composition, we learn this fact from his own lips in the follow- ing words : When I was yet a child, no childish play To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set Serious to know and learn, and thence to do What might be public good : myself I thought Born to that end, born to promote all truth And righteous things. From his very earliest days, however, his genius for poetry was clearly marked. At the age of ten he had composed some verses, and his two English paraphrases of Psalms CXIV and CXXXVI were made when he was fifteen. BIOGRAPHICAL n A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV. When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son After long toil their liberty had won, And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan land, Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand, Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown, His praise and glory was in Israel known. That saw the troubled sea, and shivering fled, And sought to hide his froth-becurled head Low in the earth ; Jordan's clear streams recoil, As a faint host that hath received the foil, The high, huge-bellied mountains skip like rams Amongst their ewes, the little hills like lambs. Why fled the ocean? and why skipped the moun- tains? Why turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains? Shake, Earth, and at the presence be aghast Of Him that ever was, and aye shall last, That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush, And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush. Psalm CXXXVI. Let us with a gladsome mind Praise the Lord, for he is kind ; For his mercies aye endure, Ever faithful, ever sure. Let us blaze his name abroad, For of gods he is the God ; For his, &c. O let us his praises tell, Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell; For his, &c. Who with his miracles doth make Amazed heaven and earth to shake ; For his, &c. 12 MILTON Who by his wisdom did create The painted heavens so full of state ; For his, &c. He was sent to St. Paul's school in 1620, when he was twelve years old, but he had commenced his education before then, having been under the care of a private tutor, one Thomas Young, a Scotch Presbyterian Minister, who was afterwards Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. When Milton became one of the one hundred and fifty-three boys, to which number St. PauPs school in its early days was limited, the High Master was Alexander Gill, " who was esteemed to have such an excellent way of training up youths, that none in his time went beyond him," and to this man and to his son, who assisted him, Milton owed very much of his early training in scholarship and in regular habits of serious study. He was four years at St. Paul's, and worked exceedingly hard while there, telling us that he was seldom in bed before midnight, and that he overstrained his eyes by too diligent study, and in that way laid the foundation of the disaster which overwhelmed him in later life. There is little doubt that both his father and the Master of the school were very anxious to see him excel, and were fully aware of his power to do so. But in addition to their desire his own intense energy must be accounted as one of the reasons for this arduous work, and instead of rinding his lessons irksome, he was, he tells us, 4 4 seized with such eagerness to learn " that he BIOGRAPHICAL 13 often " sat up half the night as well in voluntary improvement of his own choice as the exact per- fecting of his school exercises." It was during these four years that he studied Greek, French, Italian, and Hebrew, and so showed at a very tender age his earnest desire to acquire a knowledge of other languages besides his own. It was in his last year at school that he composed the two paraphrases already alluded to; that of Psalm CXXXVI, commencing: Let us with a gladsome mind Praise the Lord, for He is kind; having been sung for many generations by people who little realize that it was the work of a school- boy. He was quite ready for collegiate life when he left St. Paul's school, and he proceeded, in 1624-5, to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted on 12 th February, and spent the next seven years of his life. The rooms he occupied are still pointed out, the mulberry tree that, according to tradition, he planted, still lives and thrives, and the bath in which he took his early ablutions is one of the distinctive sights in the garden of that interesting old college. He matriculated on the 9th April of the same year. It is probable that the first part of his college career was not in every way satisfactory, and it seems clear that at first he and his tutor, Chap- pell (afterwards Bishop of Cork), had some dif- ferences, and that Milton rebelled against the treatment accorded him, and received some sort 14 MILTON of punishment for his rebellion, although it is not at all likely that the gossip repeated by Aubrey to the effect that he was flogged at Cambridge, was correct. Certainly, however, he came home for a while in 1627, and changed tutors. He was not ashamed of the part he had played in the quarrel, and refers to it in some Latin lines written at the time. Evidently it had no detri- mental effect upon his career, for he took his two degrees in regular course. At this time, as Courthope points out, "he had no instinctive sympathy with the iconoclasm of his party, but would rather have rejoiced to see the resources of archaeology, painting, and music placed at the service of religion." He had the character of being a very serious student, and the nickname given him by his fellow undergraduates, "the lady of Christ's," doubtless had to do partly with the fact that he had a slender oval face of rather feminine appearance, and that he wore his hair long; but also to do with his personal character, and his abstinence from the loose conversation so popular in his time. His ultra-Protestantism at this period of his life is revealed by the Latin poem he wrote on the "Fifth of November" ("In Quintum Novembris"), but his chief poetical works during this period were his " Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," his epitaph on Shakespeare, written in 1630, the year of the Plague, and his two epitaphs on Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, dated 1631. The epitaph on Shakespeare was the first of JOHN MILTON AS A BOY. From the oil painting in the Hall of Christ's College, Cambridge. (By permission of the Master?) BIOGRAPHICAL 15 his poetical compositions to be seen in print, as in 1632 the Second Folio of Shakespeare was issued, and the lines written by Milton were in- cluded in it, but anonymously. Milton took his B.A. degree on the 26th March, 1629, when twenty years of age, and his M.A. on the 3rd July, 1632, leaving Cambridge in that year. Unpopular when he first came to the University, he appears to have lived down his unpopularity, and to have become a favourite amongst the more serious of both students and tutors, and to have earned much affection and respect from them. He had studied the Classics so closely and become so thoroughly conversant not only with the works of the Greek and Latin authors, but with their very methods of expression, that when he left Cambridge he was a profound Latinist, and able to write and compose in that tongue as easily as in English, while so closely had the language become a part of his life, that he tells us he thought, as a rule, in Latin. It seems likely that his idea had originally been to enter the Anglican Church, but if that was so, he left Cambridge discontented with his theological position, and already permeated with strong Puritan ideas, in distinct opposition to the views of Laud, at that time coming into marked prominence. His opinions were, how- ever, immature, and the direction for which he looked all through his life was not yet clearly pointing out the path of duty for him. He was conscious of some mission in life, of some definite purpose which he had to carry out, but i6 MILTON what it was he did not yet know. Candour compels one to state that there was a certain self-satisfaction about Milton, a certain pride in his intellectual power that characterized him all through his life, and revealed itself even thus early. In his Petrarchian Stanza composed on his twenty-third birthday, and sent to his great friend, Charles Diodati, whose acquaintance he had first made at St. Paul's school, he clearly asserts his belief in some important destiny pre- pared for him, and announces that while waiting for the external impressions that would come to his sensitive nature, he is definitely self-reliant and conscious of something extraordinary in his thoughts that will lead him to some special ripe- ness of manhood. The words are as follows : On his being arrived at the age of Twenty-three. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year ! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth That I to manhood am arrived so near ; And inward ripeness doth much less appear, That some more timely-happy spirits endueth. Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task- Master's eye. BIOGRAPHICAL 17 It was fortunate for him that his father's means permitted him to await the calling of duty that he anticipated. It is probable that Milton the elder felt some disappointment that his son was unable to adopt the profession for which he had destined him, but although George Herbert and Ferrer could enter the church, it was clear to John Milton that he could not do so. He chafed under the restraints of theolo- gical training, inclining neither to the school of Abbot nor that of Laud, but occupying an academic position between the two. The old scrivener had by this time retired, and had left London and taken up his residence at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, about seventeen miles west of London. Here it was that Milton came, and in the five quiet years which he spent at his father's house he composed some of the most exquisite of his verses. No very definite purpose in life for him had yet shaped itself, and the five years appear to have been passed in study, in learning music, and in the composition of poetry. It seems probable that about this time he had made up his mind that poetry was to be his vocation in life, and that he had no very strong desire to move in the busy world. In 1641 he tells us that he had "an inward prompting which grows daily upon me that by labour and in- tense study, which I take to be my portion in this life joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times as they should not willingly let it die." He was in no hurry to determine what this B i8 MILTON important work was to be. Poetry was to him so great and so noble a profession that it needed all the self-cultivation and close study that would have been given to such a profession as the Law or the Church. The contrast between this view and the more modern idea of a poet having to be born, and not made, and of poetry flowing spontaneously into the mind, is some- what startling. It has too often been imagined that the exquisite phraseology of the poet is the result of a divine afflatus rather than of laborious care, and even Charles Lamb said he thought of Milton's " Lycidas " as of a full grown beauty, " springing up with all its parts absolute," until he was confronted with the actual manuscript of the poem, and had the proof before him of the alterations and corrections that the author had deemed it necessary to make in order that the finished work might be as perfect as possible. It is far from our wish to undervalue the divine inspiration of poetry. Without such inspiration there can be no poetic force and no real value in the poem, but inspiration is made up of parts, and without knowledge, wisdom, culture, and hard work it is hardly possible that any poem, however inspired, and however well imagined, can have any quality of immortality about it. Milton regarded his poetic work in the sense of prophecy. It had to be done to the greater glory of God. It was to be as perfect as possible, and it was to be the carrying out of that divine mission within him, the consciousness of which had possessed him from schoolboy days. Hence BIOGRAPHICAL no study was too profound, and no labour too great that he might build up the architecture of the poem and shape the thoughts that were burning within him. A commonplace book 1 of Milton's which has been preserved, and re- produced in facsimile, gives us a good idea of the work of this period. It contains notes and extracts from no fewer than eighty authors, in five languages, chiefly on historical subjects, and proves the great variety of reading in which the student was indulging himself. He was not only reading the usually accepted Classic authors, but was studying also Greek, Italian, and French history, Rabbinical literature in its native Hebrew, and was working at Syriac in order to have certain historical literature in that language clear before him. It was during these five years that he laid up that store of scholar- ship upon which, by the aid of his marvellous memory, he was able to draw so amply in the later years of his life. It must not be thought, however, that there was no immediate fruition during this period. It has already been casually said that to the time at Horton we owe some of the most ex- quisite work that Milton ever did, and although we must defer the fuller consideration of this statement to the section dealing with Milton's works, it is needful in this place to refer at least 1 This note and similar ones which follow it refer to the earliest or best editions of the various works preserved at the British Museum. 1881 a 9 B. M. See also Ac 81 13/108. 20 MILTON to the circumstances under which the Horton poems were written. They comprise " L' Allegro," " Comus," " II Penseroso," "Arcades," " Lycidas," the "Song on May Morning," "The Nightingale," and other poems. "Arcades" and "Comus" were masques, dramatic pageants, survivals perhaps of the old English mystery play. " Arcades " is only a fragment, for an allegorical pageant. Milton had made the acquaintance of Henry Lawes, the musician, in his time one of the best known composers of the nation, and there was to be a performance at Harefield in honour of some special festivity in connection with the Countess Dowager of Derby, the mother of the Countess of Bridgewater. This Lady Derby, who now lies buried at Harefield, had seen and known Spenser, and to her he had dedicated his " Tears of the Muses." She was a very aged lady, and it is possible that the performance was in honour of her birthday. The music was under the con- trol of Lawes, and Milton provided the three songs, and one short speech which formed the fragment of the masque. The speech praises the virtues of the noble lady, the songs are dainty, graceful utterances, but the whole is too frag- mentary to enable us to judge of Milton's poetic qualities, and " Arcades " is interesting more as having been the prelude to " Comus " than for its own sake. In 1634 this far more important poem was produced. Like "Arcades" it was written for Henry Lawes, and for performance before the BIOGRAPHICAL 21 Bridgewater family. Lawes was music master to Lord Bridgewater, and when the Earl was being installed as the Lord President of the Council of Wales in his official residence at Ludlow Castle, Lawes was instructed to compose an allegorical drama which was to be presented before an in- fluential gathering. We do not even know whether the poet saw the performance, or whether those who took part in it knew who was the author of the lines they uttered. We have no record of the performance, and can only learn indirectly that it was very successful, for Lawes was so importuned by his friends for copies of the words, that in 1637 he printed an edition of it, 1 in order that those who desired to possess the poem might have an opportunity of purchasing it. It did not even then, however, bear the author's name, nor, as Pattison points out, does Lawes actually say that he had the author's leave to print it, but it would seem probable from the motto from Virgil: Eheu ! quid volui misero mihi ! floribus austrum Perditus put on the title-page that this permission had been given. The poem was an intense contrast to the ordinary masques by other authors which had preceded it, and which were as a rule over- weighted with sensual qualities. It is, however, remarkable that at a time when the drama was being condemned by the Puritans there should 1 C 34 d 46 B. M. 22 MILTON have appeared a dramatic composition written for performance by a man whose Puritanism was unmistakable, but who, as has been pointed out, was at this period of his life making a definite protest for the reasonable use of the drama, and for the exquisite satisfactions that come from the legitimate use of art in all its varied forms. At the same time "Comus "was a protest; it depicted the contrast between pleasure and vice, and Comus himself was undoubtedly the spirit of dissolute pleasure which was so characteristic at the time. The conflict depicted by the poet ends in Comus being driven away, and in the liberation of the lady from the spell which had been cast over her. The poem is very full of moral teaching, couched in the stilted classical language which Milton, especially at that time, adopted, and the parts acted by the children must have been far beyond their comprehension. It has no humour in it, but is serious throughout, although for grace of imagery, dainty eloquence of phrase, and rhythmic melody, it has few com- petitors amongst English dramatic works. " Lycidas," which was written three years after the date of " Comus," was an elegy upon the death of Edward King, Fellow of Christ's College, one of Milton's old college friends, who had been drowned when crossing the Irish Channel, in August, 1637. 1 Its exquisite and pathetic lines, however, have far more to do with the life of the period, and with Milton's denunciation of the - 1 239 k 36 B. M. BIOGRAPHICAL 23 abuses of the Episcopal system, than with the death of a young colleger; and many of its pass- ages mark the first appearance of that sterner quality of patriotic Puritanism that presently was to be roused to such austere vehemence. Milton appears to have detected a strong Romeward movement in the English Episcopacy, and he used " Lycidas " as a means of denouncing what he considered a very serious crime. The two other notable works produced at Horton were " L'Allegro " and " II Penseroso," to which we shall refer more fully presently. The poet's mother died in 1637 at Horton, and was buried in the chancel of the Church, where a plain blue stone still remains to mark the spot, and a very short time afterwards Milton left England for a visit to Italy. The house at Horton, where his brother Christopher afterwards lived, was pulled down in 1798, and the present Milton Manor is supposed to stand upon its site; the church, however, which the family attended for five years, still stands, and recalls this peace- ful period in the poet's life; the last year of it disturbed by the worry of a lawsuit with Bower, the partner whom John Milton the elder had taken into his business, and in whose hands he had left the management when he retired to Horton. Milton, however, left the management of this difficulty in the hands of his father and brother, and started off on a long and tedious journey to Italy. It was a period of great men, and if we remember that Velazquez, Van Dyck, Rubens, Zurbaran, and Poussin were painting 24 MILTON at this time, and that Grotius and Descartes were the great philosophers of the period, and Cal- deron writing his dramatic verse, we can realize some of the attractions which European travel presented at the moment. Milton reached Paris in May, 1638, and was there introduced by Lord Scudamore to the scholar whom perhaps more than any one else in Europe he desired to see, the great Hugo Grotius, a man of profound learn- ing. From thence he moved on to Pisa and to Florence. At the latter place he met Galileo, and remained for two months, went on to Rome, where he stayed a while, afterwards going to Siena and Naples, and returning to Rome. He took with him introductions to the chief Italian scholars, and was gladly received and made much of. We do not know how he expended his time, but probably a good deal of attention was given to visits to various academies, and to discussions upon questions of political or classical interest. He collected a good many books, wrote a number of Latin epigrams, and engaged in controversy with many scholars. He did not neglect one of his favourite studies, music, made the acquaint- ance of Cherubini, formed a collection of Italian works on music, paying more than one visit to the celebrated Academy of Music at Bologna. After he left Rome he went to Lucca, Verona, and Venice, and then rather suddenly deciding to return to England, he crossed the Alps to Geneva, made his way to Paris, and thence home, arriving in England in August, 1639. While in Geneva he heard of the death of his JOHN MILTON. From the clay bust in the Library of Christ's College, Cambridge. (By permission of the Master?) BIOGRAPHICAL 25 great friend, Charles Diodati, and gave utter- ance to the intense sadness of his feelings in the wonderful elegy which he entitled " Epitaphium Damonis." We may be allowed to express our entire concurrence with Pattison, who, in his Memoir of Milton, expresses regret that the poet should have chosen the Latin tongue for a work which, perhaps more than any other, reflects the pathetic emotions expressed in the wonderfully skilful passages which Milton knew so well how to use. His love for Diodati was very tender and true, and in this epitaph he allowed the affection which he bore for his friend to be re- vealed. The poet must have been a man of very austere and somewhat frigid character, possess- ing but little affection either for wife, child, or friend, and carefully keeping under control, and within the narrowest limits, all such sympathy or love. For his friend Diodati, however, he had conceived a very deep affection, and if only the Epitaph had been in English, and therefore ac- cessible to the general reader, it would have probably been considered as an expression of the finest pathos of which the language could boast. It is interesting to notice, as Pattison was the first to point out, that this was the last attempt Milton made in serious Latin verse. Hencefor- ward he wrote prose composition in the Classic tongue; but his appeals to his own people in poetry were written in his own language. In July, 1639, the poet was again at Horton, but he left almost at once and came up to Lon- don, commencing his long, protracted residence 26 MILTON there. Even now he adopted no profession, and his father appears to have been ready to allow his clever son such means as he required for his sustenance. He took lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, at a tailor's shop, and there he com- menced to educate his two nephews, who were the sons of his sister Anne, one of them be- ing his godson. He must have been a some- what strange tutor, and it would have been in- teresting had Edward Phillips, to whose work on his uncle we are indebted for so much informa- tion, given some details respecting the method adopted by the poet in teaching. Phillips did however lay great stress on the enormous quan- tity of learning which he and his brother had to accept, and upon the way in which the whole day was filled up with instruction, and that upon sub- jects of almost inconceivable variety. Milton's residence in lodgings lasted a very short time; perhaps the situation was too noisy, but more probably the ever-increasing store of books drove him to find ampler accommodation, and he took a house in Aldersgate, outside the City walls, in 1640, and there settled down with the two lads. It was at this time that he com- menced noting down various ideas and sugges- tions for the great poem which he intended to write; and the remarkable manuscript at Cam- bridge reveals to us the schemes for such a work that filled his head. Nearly one hundred different subjects are suggested, over sixty of them being more or less connected with Scripture, and the remainder based on history, almost exclusively BIOGRAPHICAL 27 that of his own country. It is hardly pos- sible to over-estimate the value of this wonderful manuscript, and when it is remembered that there is practically nothing remaining in the handwriting of Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Spen- ser, we may well be thankful that England pos- sesses in the volume in Trinity College Library so important a record of Milton's work, and be grateful to the Syndics of the University Press for the perfect facsimile by which they have ren- dered it available to all students. Although, how- ever, a hundred ideas were noted down, a very long time had to elapse before Milton was to perform the life work for which all the earlier part of his career was a preparation. One satis- faction in taking the house in Aldersgate was that he had as near neighbours hie old teacher, Dr. Gill, and Dr. Diodati, the father of his dearest friend Charles, and as he was on the very edge of the country he was able quickly to get in to the fields and give up a considerable amount of time to contemplation. It was the period of the Long Parliament, and the political events had been stirring Milton to his depths, until he felt that the time had arrived when he must give utterance to his opinions. In 1 64 1 appeared his first tract " Of Reforma- tion touching Church discipline in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it," 1 issued anonymously against Episcopacy, thunder- ing out charges enunciated in no measured 1 E 208 (3) M. 28 MILTON form, but concluding with a marvellous ode or prayer, of impassioned eloquence. He followed it the same year with a pamphlet on "Prelaticall Episcopacy," 1 a tirade against Archbishop Usher, and then followed a tract against Bishop Hall, 2 issued in July, also anonymously. There is no doubt that Milton felt very strongly in respect to the bitter controversy which was going on be- tween the Episcopal and the Puritan parties. The ill-judged levity and abuse, however, which fill these tracts, can hardly be excused. They are in parts quite ferocious, their personal abuse outrageous and magnificent as are many of the passages, they but serve to enlighten us concern- ing the extraordinary self-satisfaction, always an important factor in Milton's character, which rendered it almost impossible for him to believe that those who differed from him could by any possibility be right, and which led him so far to forget the laws of warfare, as to believe that personal abuse was a legitimate weapon to use. A little later on he amended and re-issued his first tract, calling it "The reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty "; 3 and to this appended an autobiographical chapter, in which he declared for Presbyterianism and talked of the necessity for his relinquishing poetry in order to make his attack upon prelacy. He had all his life taken himself exceedingly seriously, and it must be confessed that whatever came from the pen of the author of " Paradise Lost " deserves 1 E 164 (19) B. M. 2 E 134 (1) B. M. 3 E 137 (9) B. M. BIOGRAPHICAL 29 attention ; but the pages of indignation and con- tempt, and the torrent of violent and ill-mannered abuse, of which Milton was capable, serve but to make more startling the fact that a man who could thus write so violently was capable of the exquisite poetry which had been produced at Horton. No student of Milton, however, can afford to pass by these early pamphlets. They do not re- veal him in a pleasing light, but there are pass- ages in them (as a rule at their conclusion) which are almost as magnificent as the ancient prophecies of the Bible. His " Apology against a pamphlet call'd a modest Confutation of the Animadversions," 1 issued in 1642, is a piece of banter coupled with a certain nobly-serious statement of his own purity and self-respect. Early in the summer of the following year Milton married. In doing this he seems to have taken all his friends by surprise, and it would almost appear as though he himself entered into the matrimonial state on a sudden impulse. The bridegroom was thirty-five years of age, his bride a girl of seventeen, the daughter of a country squire of strong Royalist sympathies who had many transactions with John Milton the elder. It has been suggested that a little while before this Milton had taken up arms, and seen some service in the field; and certain it is that on the 1 2th November, 1642, every able-bodied citizen was supposed to have turned out to oppose the 1 E 147 (22) B. M. 3° MILTON march of the King, who had advanced to Brent- ford. There is no evidence, however, to prove that Milton took part in the expedition. On the con- trary, there is some ground for showing that he did not, and Pattison most definitely states that he cannot believe but that Milton on this occasion stayed at home. The suggestion as to his taking up arms was considered to account for his being in Oxfordshire where he found his bride, but there is no reason for making this suggestion beyond the fact that no one seems to have known why he suddenly left London, or why he remained away a month, and all were astonished when he brought back his wife with him, and some of her nearest relations. We now enter upon the discussion of a very difficult problem. Mary Powell or Mary Milton as we must now call her, remained with her hus- band for one month only, and then, in July, she went home, promising to return in September. She remained away, however, for two years, and although Milton sent for her again and again, requiring her to return, she refused, and per- suaded her relations to write and ask permission for her to remain away still longer. An interesting literary question is here in- volved. Milton is said to have been so disgusted with the treatment he received from his wife that he seriously considered the question of divorce, and prepared his famous tract on the " Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." In it he argues that indisposition, unfitness, contrariety of mind, BIOGRAPHICAL and even inability for fit conversation, constitute just causes for divorce, and in a most definite and dogmatic manner, writing entirely from the husband's point of view, he gives every reason why the man should take the necessary steps to rid himself of the unsuitable wife. It is a pam- phlet marked by much intellectual courage, and by poetical genius, but it is wholly impracticable in the calm way in which it ignores the regula- tion of the home and domestic affairs, and scorns to deal with such matters as dowry, family, or maintenance. It is the work of a visionary, roused to a high pitch of feeling and utterly in- capable of realizing that there might be another side to the question possessing equal importance. Upon Mary Milton's shoulders have been placed the burden of this pamphlet, and those who support Milton in everything that he did, claim for him that her inability to comprehend the learning of her husband and the magnificence of his intellect was the cause of this tract. The investigations, however, of Professor Masson, respecting the date upon which the tract was issued, seem to make it quite possible that Milton had actually been considering the com- position of this vehement argument during his very honeymoon. Certain it is that the copy of the first edition in the British Museum 1 is quite distinctly dated ist August, 1643. We must con- fess that we have no definite date of Milton's mar- 1 12 GF '7 B . M . 119 3 3 MILTON riage, Phillips, so circumstantial in most matters, having, curiously enough, omitted to supply this fact, and undoubtedly the enlarged edition of the book came out on the 2nd February, 1 643-4, 1 after Mrs. Milton had refused to come home. It does, however, seem possible that the incompatibility of temper to which the poet re- ferred in the tract, was discovered within the first few days of matrimony, and that forthwith this vehement and austere husband set to work to compose the startling pamphlet on divorce which might have been really dangerous had it not been for its hopeless impracticability. There is probably something to be said for Mary Milton, even in these early days. Whether the issue of these pamphlets was due to any action on her part, or to a want of sympathy between the bright and gay girl with strong Royalist attachments, and the grave, stern student, whose heart and soul were already with the Puritan movement, cannot be decided at this time; but whatever may have been their cause, the vehement pro- tests created considerable excitement, and car- ried the question of a possibility of divorce between a man and his wife who did not suit one another, further than the author appears to have anticipated. They practically created a scandal. Milton's own party, at that time the Presbyterian, was supposed to repudiate him, and the Episcopal party was delighted at the 1 12 Ee 5 (E 31) B. M. 141 JOHN MILTON. From the painting by Pieter van der Plaas in the National Portrait Gallery, BIOGRAPHICAL 33 possibility of a rupture, while certain disaffected persons were threatening to take the law into their own hands, and alter their domestic arrange- ments at their own free will. The first treatise was succeeded by three others, " The judgment of Bucer concerning divorce," 1 was issued on 15th July, 1544, followed in the next year by two pamphlets on the same subject, one called " Tetrachordon," 2 and the other " Colasterion." 3 Of these two the former was a heavy, learned treatise, the latter a most bitter and ferocious attack on his critics. In the meantime, however, Milton had been called in question for issuing unlicensed books, and his reply to the charge was a most characteristic one. On the 24th November, 1644, there appeared from his pen the pamphlet which he entitled " Areopagitica, 4 a speech for the liberty of un- licensed printing in England," one of the best known of his pamphlets. This was issued un- licensed and unregistered, and was a piece of most eloquent pleading for the liberty of the Press, courageous, courteous, and seasoned with that most rare quality in Milton's works, a sense of humour. For once he allowed his ability to write bitter invective to be held under serious check, contenting himself with scorn, but writing in far more courteous fashion than was his wont. His tracts on divorce had, however, created the greater sensation, and were very much talked about, it being even suggested that Milton was 1 883 g 4 B. M. 2 E 271 (12) B. M. 3 E 271 (11) B. M. 4 E 18 (9) B. M. C 34 MILTON prepared to put into force the proposals made in the pamphlet, and his name was coupled first of all with that of Lady Margaret Ley, and then with that of Miss Davis. It is probable that it was all idle gossip, but meantime the condition of affairs for the Powell family had altered for the worse, and it was felt that Milton was on the gaining side, and that his influence might be useful. A reconciliation was accordingly arranged by mutual friends between Milton and his wife, and she was brought to London to a house where he frequently used to visit. A pathetic interview took place between the husband and wife, she pleading her youth, her inexperience, and the influence of her mother, and he, indifferent to excuses, only too ready to receive her back to his home. He not only did that, but very shortly afterwards, when the estate upon which she had lived, was taken possession of by the army, he re- ceived into his house almost every member of the Powell family, even including his wife's mother. A little while before this, John Milton the elder had come to reside with his son. He had moved from Horton to Reading, but when the latter place was taken by the Parliamentary forces, he had come up to London. Milton meantime found his house in Aldersgate Street too small for him, he had taken more pupils to live with him, and he had issued (on 5th June, 1 644) a remarkable pamphlet called a " Tractate on Education," 1 in which in the form of a letter 1 E so (12) B. M. BIOGRAPHICAL 35 to Master S. Hartlib he had clearly set forth his ideas on the training of boys, and his idealistic theory as to the class of study to which their time should be devoted. Like his tracts on divorce, it was curiously impracticable, ex- cellent in theory, but almost impossible to be carried out. It, however, received some atten- tion, and probably led to an increase in the number of his pupils. An ampler residence was necessary, and Milton with his father moved to a house in the Barbican, not very far from where he had been residing, and it was to this place that he brought his wife and various members of the Powell family. Here it was that his first daughter, Anne, was born, and here both John Milton the elder, and Mrs. Milton's father, died. By the time he had moved to the Barbican, he had ceased to be a Presbyterian, had be- come an Independent, and was one of the best known and most powerful controversialists of his day. He was not now, however, confining his attention to political pamphlets, but was looking over his early works in poetry with a view to the issue of some of them through the Press. The first volume of his poems 1 appeared in January, 1645-6, and had appended to it the first of the two portraits of the poet published during his lifetime. Unfortunately this portrait was a miserable piece of work, a most unsatis- factory engraving, and Milton supplied some Greek lines to be put underneath it which the 1 E 1 126 B. M. 36 MILTON unsuspecting engraver added in a tablet beneath, little aware of the meaning of the words he had engraved. The verses may be translated as follows : That an unskilful hand had carved this print You'd say at once, seeing the living face ; But finding here no jot of me, my friends, Laugh at the botching-artist's mis-attempt. In 1647 Milton moved again, now taking a house in High Holborn, which had a back en- trance into Lincoln's Inn Fields. His means by this time had probably become augmented owing to the decease of his father, and on leaving the Barbican he ceased to take pupils, and devoted his whole time to literary work. In the following year his second daughter, Mary, was born, and in the early part of 1648 the poet appears to have definitely thrown the weight of his influence on to the side of the Re- publican party, and to have attached himself warmly to the advanced section of the Puritans. During the King's trial, he was at work upon his pamphlet called " The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," 1 which was issued on the 13th February, 1648-9, and clearly announced his strong attachment to the Regicide party. It was a courageous and very skilfully composed argu- ment, but was not couched in so agreeable a literary style as had been the case with many of his preceding pamphlets. It marked, however, the turning-point in his career, and within a few 1 E 542 (12) B. M. BIOGRAPHICAL 37 weeks after its appearance he was waited upon by a deputation from the newly-created Council of State, offering him the position of Latin Secre- tary to the Council, and pressing him to accept a place in which his literary powers would be placed at the service of the State. His stipend was to be a sum of money, which in present cur- rency would represent about a thousand a year, so highly were his services esteemed; and although even at this stage of his life his eyesight was beginning to fail him, he was nothing loth to accept the office, and was delighted to throw in his lot with the turbulent usurpers who were taking upon themselves to govern the country. On the 20th March, 1648-9, Milton took office with the Council of the State, and his first Latin letter w r as addressed to the Senate at Hamburg, and dated 2nd April. In it he para- phrased the grand old Roman expression, and wrote his epistle as from Senatus popuhisque Anglicanus. His work took him to Whitehall, and it was desirable that he should be in residence close at hand. He appears to have been promised apart- ments in Whitehall Palace, but until they were ready he took lodgings at Charing Cross close to Spring Gardens, where he remained for seven months, residing close to the place now occupied by the offices of the London County Council. Then he moved to Whitehall Palace, into rooms opening out of Scotland Yard, close to the Guard House, and there it was that his only son, John, was born. 33 MILTON A very few days after the death of Charles I there appeared that momentous work called " Eikon Basilike, the True Portraiture of His Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings. " The first edition 1 appeared on 9th February, 1648-9, and was issued without license and bearing the name of neither printer nor publisher. It created a great sensation, and no less than fifty editions of it were produced in the year. If it had but appeared three weeks earlier it might have saved the King's life. It was seized upon by his sup- porters as a weapon of the strongest quality with which to attack the Council of State, and despite every effort to proscribe its issues no decree had the slightest effect in preventing edition after edition being turned out. It w T as firmly believed to have been the composition of the King himself, and it seems to be most probable from investigations made a few years a g°> by Mr. Almack, and gathered up in his remarkable bibliography of " The King's Book," that the popular belief was the correct one, and that the bulk of the little volume was actually the work of Charles I, and is not to be attributed, as it was by his enemies, to Dr. Gauden. It appears to be at least certain that a considerable part of the materials for the book was prepared by the King. Perhaps no book ever issued in England created a greater sensation. It was read with the strongest emotion through the length and breadth of the kingdom, and it stirred 1 E 1096 B. M. JOHN MILTON AS A YOUNG MAN. From the miniature by Samuel Cooper at Montagu House. {By permission of the Duke of Buccleztch and Queensberry^) BIOGRAPHICAL the feelings of the supporters of the throne to their very depths. The first edition had been issued with great haste, and one sheet of it (sheet G) was inaccurately numbered, while other succeeding editions came out with inac- curacies, as the volume had to be printed with the greatest secrecy, the Republican Government using every effort to suppress it. Editions were prepared in all sorts of sizes, from the very diminutive one which would go in the vest pocket, to the large quarto; and many of the books were bound in black leather adorned with mourning emblems, and having black edges. It was trans- lated into many foreign languages, and was printed abroad as well as in England, and, as has been wisely said, "under the spell of its influence, the King became encircled with a halo of sanctity almost divine, Charles the Martyr becoming henceforth a kind of idealized person- ality, an incarnation of righteousness in afflic- tion. " The Council of State was greatly alarmed, as the influence of the book was tremendous, and a very determined effort had to be made to provide a reply to it. To Milton was given the commission, and on the 6th October, 1649, a P~ peared his celebrated " E